Schopenhauer's Porcupines Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

Each generation of therapists can boast of only a few writers like Deborah Luepnitz, whose sympathy and wit shine through a fine, luminous prose. In Schopenhauer's Porcupines she recounts five true stories from her practice, stories of patients who range from the super-rich to the homeless and who grapple with panic attacks, psychosomatic illness, marital despair, and sexual recklessness. Intimate, original, and triumphantly funny, Schopenhauer's Porcupines goes further than any other book in unveiling the secrets of "how talking helps."

Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Ph.D., is on the Clinical Faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She is the author of Child Custody (l982) and The Family Interpreted (l988; revised edition, 2002) and is a contributing author to the Cambridge Companion to Lacan (forthcoming). She maintains a private practice in Philadelphia.